When Celine makes the decision to follow Jesse, a precocious American
boy she just met on the train they’re taking from Budapest, off the train and into Vienna for the day, she sets into motion the plot of Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater’s sweet, honest film about a chance encounter between two young people from different places. With only a few hours until Jesse has to leave for his flight the next morning, the two spend the day walking around the city, talking about time travel, holding imaginary phone calls, and listening to vinyl in record store booths. As the sun sets, they persuade a local barman to give them a free bottle of wine, “for the greatest night in their lives”.
Ah, you sigh as the credits roll, how I too would love one day to experience the free abandon that comes from meeting and connecting with a stranger in an unfamiliar place. Maybe they’d be incredibly attractive, and maybe we’d have but a brief moment to share, and later we’d part with a bittersweet goodbye. Perhaps you’ve also seen Lost in Translation, where Bill Murray, flagging from an alienating experience filming a commercial for whisky in Japan, catches the eye of Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a young woman feeling alone in her marriage and in Tokyo. They find something familiar and comforting in each other, in this most unfamiliar of places. Romance is played out in a subtler way here, but the connection, the understanding between the two is undeniable.
But wait one second! Let your wistful hopes lie at rest: we might not all have
met interesting strangers in foreign places, but we have all had freshers’ week. Maybe you shared a boptail with that guy on your staircase, and felt briefly comforted when he nodded along to your gap year stories. If you think about it, really, we’re all a bit like Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation. Okay, so you didn’t exchange shyly meaningful glances with Julie Delpy in a listening booth in a record store in Vienna, but you played Wonderwall’ on guitar at predrinks that time and everyone sang along. You might not have shared tentative philosophies about reincarnation, but you’ve probably discussed whether the Oxford Union’s worth joining (it’s not) over a pint in your college bar.
Yeah, okay, no-one’s convinced. Although in the cinema, chance encounters are often sweet moments of familiarity between people destined to meet (you sit on a bench, make eye contact with a beautiful stranger, the sun comes out and you strike up conversation – easy), if you were waiting for some divine cinematic coincidence in freshers’ week, chances are you had to settle for chatting to the girl in front of you in the Hassan’s queue. And here in Oxford, you’re unlikely to be able to bare all to a stranger you’ll never see again, because chances are you’ll bump into them on Turl Street before the week ends.
It’s not all bad though. Real life ain’t like the movies, and freshers’ week encounters aren’t fairytales, but all the same, there is a strange beauty in sharing an unpleasant drink with someone you’re not sure if you like yet. And no-one’s turning it into a film any time soon, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t get on pretty well with that Hassan’s queue girl. So do keep watching films like Lost in Translation and Before Sunrise, but remember
that if some guy did actually come up to you in Balliol bar and start
philosophising about reincarnation, you might end up turning back
to the guy you werecomplaining about lectures with.
